“Why are you telling me all this?” I looked at my watch.
A task that I dreaded still awaited me: notifying the deputy’s widow.
“We’re being attacked, Cantrell. Sudamento’s ability to generate electricity is threatened.”
“Who’s doing the attacking?” I asked.
No answer.
“Are you talking about an act of terrorism?” I lowered my voice. “You think it’s domestic or foreign?”
There were two ways to disrupt the grid—this much I knew. A software hack, something that could be initiated by people on the other side of the globe. Or a physical attack on the hardware—transmission lines, generators, turbines.
“If we knew any of that, do you think I’d be here?”
“What do the feds say?”
He didn’t respond. After a moment, he shrugged.
“You have brought them into this, right?”
“Of course.” He rolled his eyes. “Homeland Security, the FBI, and a bunch of other alphabet agencies are crawling over each other. It’s like a dick-measuring contest.” He paused. “But none of them have any viable leads at the moment.”
His statement implied the feds were on-site, which meant a hardware attack, not a network breach.
I took a sip of my coffee and then pushed the cup away. I wondered why Price had contacted me but decided not to take the time to ask. Minutes were dribbling away. Time for me to leave.
“Do you know what happens if the power grid goes down?” he said. “I’m talking more than just a few counties in Texas for an hour or two.”
“People go all Mad Max?” I asked. “And the doomsday preppers get to say I told you so?”
“Always the wisecracks.” He shook his head.
I sighed and then ran down the checklist for him—the stuff any military personnel or law-enforcement officer knows—just to prove I wasn’t a total smart-ass.
Most grocery stores only have three days’ worth of inventory. Perishable goods would spoil within a day or so. Gas pumps wouldn’t work, so food trucks couldn’t deliver nonperishable items. Banks wouldn’t be able to keep track of their money. Hospital generators would run out of fuel.
“And the economy grinds to a halt.” I finished my little speech.
He nodded. “Which means tax revenues drop, so Uncle Sam starts to run out of money.”
I looked at my phone. Nine text messages, all of them concerning the murder. I needed to get back to work. Coming here had been a mistake.
“The attack feels like a probing action,” he said. “Testing our security, the integrity of the grid. Our thinking is this is just a warm-up, getting ready for something big.”
We sat in silence for a moment. The waitress left the room.
“Sudamento would like some fresh eyes on this situation,” Price said. “We’re willing to pay you a substantial consulting fee.”
“When you were looking on Craigslist for ‘fresh eyes,’ did my name pop up?”
He didn’t reply.
“Is this the part where you remind me how I owe you?” I said. “The brothers-in-arms routine?”
I felt a momentary twinge for bringing up our history in such a manner. The feeling passed.
“Best of luck to you.” I slid from the booth, stood. “In case you haven’t noticed, I already have gainful employment. I’m a sheriff now, not a fed or a contractor.”
Price stood as well, moving close enough that I could smell his cologne, a subtle fragrance that made me think of sage and limes. Expensive, unlike Irving Patel’s drugstore brand.
“Skip the Andy Griffith routine,” he said.
We stared at each other, not blinking.
“Your former employer strong-armed you into this job,” he said. “You’d never even set foot in Peterson County until three months ago.”
I tried to control my anger. The sheriff’s job represented a chance at stability and a new start. I didn’t want people like Price Anderson screwing that up. I also didn’t want to admit, even to myself, how bored I was. The job really only occupied half my time. The rest of the day I spent wondering about Piper—the mother of my child—who had disappeared soon after our arrival in the county, along with my infant daughter.
“Let the feds do their job,” I said. “This is their turf.”
He chuckled. “Who do you think sent me?”
- CHAPTER EIGHT -
Sarah knows the LaCrosse is compromised.
The good-looking sheriff with the mirrored sunglasses is not stupid. She sensed that during their short encounter a few minutes ago. By now he’s found RockyRoad’s body, dead from a gunshot wound, with his cocaine and pistol and his pants pulled down.
Mildred Johnson, the identity she used to check into the motel, doesn’t exist. The only real information she’s left in her wake, other than a bucket full of forensics evidence that will take time to process, is the Buick LaCrosse.
Therefore, the vehicle has to go.
She speeds north on the access road, past the skeevy truck stop with its diner and strip club. She merges onto the highway, going the speed limit.
With the growth in Texas’s population in recent years, the interstate has become more—oh, how to put it—upscale. Gone for the most part are the biker bars, one-room liquor stores, and mom-and-pop porn shops.
Now it’s chain restaurants, outlet malls, and service stations advertising clean bathrooms. This, coupled with the advent of cheap video-monitoring systems, makes it damn hard to get rid of a hot car and find a new one.
Ten or twelve miles blow by before Sarah sees what she needs, a VFW hall with blacked-out windows, set back from the highway.
The building is cinder block, surrounded by a gravel parking area with only a handful of cars. Older models, easy to steal. No fancy electronic key fobs or LoJack systems for the VFW crowd.
She exits the interstate, doubles back, does a drive-by.
The building doesn’t have cameras.
At the rear of the structure, hidden from the road, sits a lime-green, late-1970s Monte Carlo.
Next to the VFW hall is an abandoned Whataburger.
Sarah parks at the shuttered fast-food restaurant. From the rear floor, she grabs a coat hanger and a rag. She wipes down the inside of the LaCrosse with the rag, gets out, does the same to the handle.
Her brother, Elias, two years older, had taught her how to steal an automobile. After getting out of the army, he’d learned the skill from a Mexican in Shreveport who used to boost cars for a chop shop in Sabine Parish.
With an old General Motors car like the Monte Carlo, all you need is a flat-head screwdriver. Sarah finds one in the trunk of the LaCrosse.
It’s a little after lunch. The sky is a cloudless haze, the color of pewter. Heat radiates off the cracked asphalt beneath her feet.
Purse on her shoulder, hanger and screwdriver in hand, she trots to the VFW hall, sweat trickling down the small of her back. She’s still wearing the shapeless raincoat and Dallas Cowboys ball cap.
No one is outside. She imagines the inside of the bar, dim and cool, full of day drinkers—old men talking about the price of corn and the way things used to be.
The driver’s side of the Monte Carlo is unlocked. Small mercies.
She throws the coat hanger across the lot. Opens the door, tosses the purse inside. She’s just about to slide behind the wheel when the rear exit of the VFW hall swings outward and a guy in overalls staggers into the heat, blinking, clutching a Schlitz tallboy.
Mr. Overalls is in his seventies and wobbly, drunk like a redneck at a tractor pull. He’s got the distended stomach and burst capillaries of someone whose natural state is soused.
He squints at Sarah, eyes watery.
Please go back to the bar, Sarah says to herself. I do not want to hurt you.
“Hey.” He points at her. “W-what are doing with Charlie’s car?”
His words slur. Charlie sounds like Sharley.
“Charlie said I could borrow it.” Sarah smiles.
“Charlie don’t loan his car out,” the old man says. “Are you his daughter?”
Sarah’s pocket vibrates, her real cell phone.
“Wait a minute.” Mr. Overalls scratches his head. “Charlie’s daughter is dead, right?”
Sarah doesn’t move. No sense boosting a car if it’s going to be reported stolen in the next thirty seconds. She could get back in the LaCrosse and look for another suitable vehicle, but she doesn’t want to take the time.
That leaves plan B. Take out Mr. Overalls.
The thought makes her stomach churn. The drunk is innocent. He shouldn’t have to die for her sins.
The old guy takes a long pull of beer. He squints at her like maybe he’s not sure what he’s seeing.
She imagines what her grandfather’s reaction to this current predicament would be. He’d have no hesitation. The old drunk would be on his way to the great VFW hall in the sky.
The cell keeps vibrating. She continues to ignore it. She touches the folding knife in the waistband of her jeans instead, her hand slick with perspiration.
“I never did like Charlie much.” The old drunk tosses the beer can away.
Sarah doesn’t say anything. Seconds tick by. Sweat beads on her forehead.
He peers into the distance, like something important is out there in the heat and the dust.
The vibrating phone stops.
Sarah slides the knife from her waistband.
The old drunk doesn’t appear to notice. He burps and walks away, headed down the side of the building.
She watches him for a moment. Then she hops behind the wheel, jams the screwdriver in the ignition, and starts the motor.
The old man seems to have forgotten Charlie and his Monte Carlo. At the corner of the building, he unzips his overalls, urinates into the gravel.
Sarah puts the car in reverse, backs out of the parking space. She glances once more at the old man, realizing he’s too drunk to remember her. Then she drives off.
Thirty seconds later, she’s on the interstate. The Monte Carlo is in pretty good shape, considering its age. The seat is worn and the carpet has holes, but the motor runs strong, as does the AC.
She pulls her cell phone out, checks the messages.
A recorded voice. Fear clutches at her heart like a talon. She jams the accelerator to the floor, ignoring the speed limit, and heads to Dallas.
- CHAPTER NINE -
I walked down the hall of the hospital in Waco. The air was cool and clean, smelling like a hospital should, a heavy mixture of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant that implied everything was going to be okay.
The deputy’s wife, Kelsey, was in a room on the third floor, recovering from the injuries she’d received during an argument with her now-dead husband. Her window overlooked the only shopping mall in town, giving her a nice view of the parking lot for Bed Bath & Beyond.
Before she took off for parts unknown, Piper had shopped there, buying stuff for the nursery.
I put the past back where it belonged and turned my attention to Kelsey.
“They’re not gonna give you his benefits,” I said. “Wish there was something I could do, but there’s not.”
She wiped a tear from her good eye with a Kleenex.
Her other eye, the one with the cracked orbital socket, was swollen shut. That side of her face was the color of eggplant, like she’d gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson.
“The county commissioners,” I said. “They’d already filed the paperwork to fire him.”
She shook her head slowly, a lost expression on her face, the emotional weight of everything obviously pressing down on her. She’d known as soon as I’d walked in that her husband was dead. People usually do. Not getting the benefits, that was a low blow, but government agencies live and die by their policies and procedures.
I skipped the more lurid details surrounding her husband’s death. The cocaine, the indication that another woman was involved. I told her I was sorry, and that we’d find whoever was responsible.
“I got three kids and no job.” She crumpled the tissue. “What am I supposed to do?”
Kelsey was twenty-nine, born and raised in Peterson County. For her honeymoon a decade before, she and her husband had gone to Fort Worth, the farthest north she’d ever been in her life.
“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “Not sure what, but I won’t let you end up on the street.”
She blew her nose into a fresh tissue.
“When do the docs think you can leave?” I asked.
“Couple days.”
“Me or one of the other deputies will pick you up,” I said. “Make sure you’ve got everything you need.”
“That include my benefits?”
I didn’t reply.
“Who’s gonna help me with those kids?”
She wasn’t talking to me. The question appeared to be addressed to the universe in general, a place that wasn’t very kind to single mothers with only a high school diploma.
I walked to the window.
The Bed Bath & Beyond was doing a thriving business.
Young people walking hand in hand, newlyweds and freshly engaged couples, imagining married life as a happy blur of Hallmark memories. With a wedding and the rest of your days before you, nobody ever thinks about cracked orbital sockets or cocaine addiction.
“Kelsey, I’m sorry to get into this right now, but I have to ask you some questions.”
“Whatever,” she said. “You’re a cop. That’s what cops do.”
I turned away from the window. “You know anybody who’d want to kill him?”
She took a sip of water from a cup with a straw. “Other than the husbands of the sluts he was screwing?”
I didn’t say anything. Her good eye filled with tears.
“Or whatever dope dealer he stiffed?” she said.
“I’m gonna need a list. Sorry to put you through this.”
A nurse came in, carrying a cup of pills. She stared at me, said, “Everything all right in here?”
Kelsey nodded.
“I have to go.” I headed toward the door.
The nurse handed Kelsey the pills and then adjusted her IV.
At the door, I stopped. “I’ll come back when you’re feeling better.”
“Wait,” Kelsey said. “You checked his computer yet?”
I didn’t say anything.
“He was meeting women online. One of those places on the Internet for people looking to cheat.”
A website for people looking to step out on their spouse.
That’s the type of place where you might arrange a rendezvous at a motel on the interstate.
- CHAPTER TEN -
My office was on the ground floor of the county courthouse. The building was two stories, limestone and granite, constructed in the 1920s when cotton revenues swelled the local tax coffers and black people had to drink from a separate fountain.
The structure was in the middle of the town square and completely at odds with the current economic climate, which could barely support the construction of a Quonset hut. The building itself wasn’t in very good shape either. The plumbing leaked, as did the roof. The marble flooring was worn into grooves in the middle of the hallways. The air smelled like old paper and mildew.
As was my habit, I circled the square before parking, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Usually that meant a drunk sleeping in the shade of the bus station or an elderly runaway from the nursing home two blocks over.
Today was different.
Three black Suburbans, antennas sprouting from their tops, idled underneat
h the canopy of the gas station by the funeral home. Through the SUVs’ front windows I could see men in suits, wearing sunglasses.
By the entrance to the courthouse were two vehicles that clearly didn’t belong.
A Lincoln Navigator, hunter green, marked on the side with a decal that read, SUDAMENTO: CLEAN POWER FOR A CLEAN TEXAS. Next to the Lincoln was another black Suburban, similar to the ones at the gas station.
I parked in the spot reserved for the sheriff and got out.
Midafternoon. The sign on the bank across the street indicated it was 101 degrees. No breeze. The leaves on the trees hung listlessly, curled at the edges.
Jerry marched out the front door of the courthouse, his lips pressed together, eyes narrow. He intercepted me at the curb.
“What’s going on here, Sheriff Cantrell?” He pointed to the Suburbans. “Who are these people?”
Sheriff Cantrell? He always called me Jon. He must be really upset.
“My guess is they’re feds of some sort.”
“When we hired you, we were told this wouldn’t be a problem.”
“This what?” I asked.
“We wanted somebody to keep order in the county,” he said. “Not have a bunch a damn G-men running around here.”
The past was a bitch, always sitting on your shoulder, waiting to pop her head up when you least expect it.
My time as a federal law-enforcement contractor had generated a certain amount of headlines and notoriety, an unsavoriness that Jerry wanted kept out of his county. Who could blame him?
Nevertheless, I was hot and tired and not in the mood to rehash ancient history.
“Kelsey’s benefits,” I said. “The commissioners need to reinstate them.”
He mopped his brow with a handkerchief, a blank look on his face.
“She’s in a tough spot,” I said. “The county shouldn’t make her situation worse just because it can.”
“Jon . . . I’m, uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s this damn heat.”
“No worries.” I forced a smile.
“Do you have any leads on who killed our man?” He put his handkerchief away. “This is an affront to the county. We can’t rest until the murderer—”
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